1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to electronic commerce, and more specifically, to online searches for items within an electronic commerce environment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Many online resources provide utilities that support searches for information, such as items for sale at an electronic commerce website (also referred to herein as an e-commerce website). To begin a search, typically a website user supplies one or more search terms that are descriptive of the information sought to a search engine within the website. The search engine then processes the search query to identify relevant results from a collection of information (e.g., stored within a database), and then returns the results to the user. The results are automatically generated using algorithms that attempt to match the search query against information in the collection. Being automated, the quality of the results returned by the search engine is largely dependent upon the specificity of the search query, the specificity of the information in the collection, and the ability of the search algorithms to locate and identify information relevant to the query. In some cases, the search results may not be accurate, current, relevant, or satisfactory to the user.